Summary: Danny gets hurt when the pyrotechnics go off at the wrong time during the final show of the Europe tour. Sam has a bit of a breakdown. Not all bartenders are licenced therapists.
Tags: Sam x Danny, hurt/comfort, angst with a happy ending, friends to lovers.
Word count: 3.4k
“FUCK”
Sam was angry.
This last show should have been great. The final show to end all shows for this year’s Europe tour. Instead it had been one of the worst shows they had possibly ever played. And that was including all the shitty dive bars and biker festivals they had toured when they were just starting out.
The show had started half an hour late because there was an issue with security. Apparently some fans had tried to smuggle in a sword to match the show aesthetic. Sam had still been kind of able to laugh at that.
But then when they finally were able to enter the stage the curtain drop had gotten caught on some ceiling amps, making sure only the left half of the arena actually got to witness the dramatic opening.
After that Jake had snapped a string on his guitar, Josh’s mic kept cutting out on his high notes, Sam’s bass kept giving feedback and Danny had almost been roasted alive when the pyrotechnics didn’t go off as planned.
That last one had actually upset Sam the most. Technical difficulties be damned, They couldn’t tour without Danny. Hell, him and his brothers could barely live without Danny at this point. He was their rock, their silent guardian and impartial referee.
Not to mention Sammy was madly in love with him.
He’d never mentioned it to him of course. Not wanting to compromise their friendship or their careers. Danny was an honorary brother, he was one of them. Always had been and always would be.
But to Sam he was so much more.
He shook his head, trying to rid his brain of these unspoken feelings and the panic he had felt when he saw Danny flinch at the fire.
He had seemed all right in the moment, hardly even missing a beat in the song, and carrying on as if nothing had happened. As if this had all been part of the show.
But the pain on Danny’s face hadn’t been part of the show. And neither had the ragged gasp he’d let spill from his lips when Sam had put an arm around his back for their final bow.
As soon as they had left the stage medics had carted Danny off to the first aid area that had been set up backstage.
Jake and Josh had been upset as well of course, immediately confronting the technicians about what the hell had happened.
They had been upset, but Sammy saw red.
He wanted to punch someone in the face, wanted to yell at them, make them pay for hurting his Danny.
But he couldn’t do that.
Sam was not a violent person. And Danny was not his.
So instead he had stormed off to the backstage bar. He would have preferred to follow Danny to the first aid area but he needed to get his emotions under control first.
If Danny was actually hurt…. Sam couldn’t even think about that. Couldn’t think about all the things he’d never told him, all the moments they had never gotten to share.
Sam knew he was being overly dramatic. Danny had finished the set, he had calmly walked off stage and quietly followed the medics. If he was hurt it was probably very minor. But Sam’s mind was going a thousand miles an hour.
He had yelled “FUCK” as he’d swung open the doors to the bar area, slightly startling the poor barman who had been polishing some glasses and was probably still unaware the show had even ended. It usually took them quite a bit longer to make it to the bar after a performance. Prioritising showers and comfortable clothes before food and drink.
To his credit the barman quickly recovered from the jumpscare and plastered a standard, easy smile on his face.
“Mister Kiszka,” he said in a pleasant tone. “How can I be of service tonight?”
Sam let out a humourless laugh. No one ever called him by his last name.
“You can start by calling me Sam.” he said, voice coming out slightly harsher than intended.
“Tequila soda please.” he continued after a sigh and a concentrated effort to make himself sound slightly less like an asshole.
“Very well Sam,” the man replied. “One tequila soda coming right up.
Sam took a seat at the bar, placing his elbows on the wood in front of him and resting his head in his hands.
After a few moments a glass was placed in front of him. He barely looked up to take a sip from the drink, head still half resting on one of his hands as he used the other hand to drag the glass slightly more towards him and hold the straw in place.
Sam silently chugged the drink through the straw. It was cold and refreshing and the alcohol lightly burned its way down his throat.
The barman watched him quietly from the end of the bar.
When Sam finished his drink and immediately asked for another he spoke up.
“I almost hesitate to ask how the show went.” he said as he slowly started mixing another drink.
Sam scoffed.
“Then don’t.” he snapped back at the man. But he immediately kicked himself at the reply. He hated feeling like this, being like this.
He wasn’t a dick, he always tried to be nice to people no matter how he felt. He lived by the rule that just because your day was shit, that didn't give you the right to ruin someone else’s day too.
He slumped over a little more, anger fading to sadness and mumbled out a quick apology.
“Sorry.” he said, avoiding eye contact and simply staring at the woodgrain on the bartop instead.
“I’m not usually this much of an asshole. I didn’t even ask your name.” he looked up slightly, shooting the barman an apologetic smile.
The man smiled back at him, he looked kind.
He replaced Sam’s empty glass with a full one and extended his hand to him.
“I’m Felix, nice to meet you Sam.”
Sam shook his hand. He didn’t really believe he had been nice to meet, not right now anyway, but he appreciated the kind words.
“And don’t worry about it, dealing with assholes kind of comes with the job. So far you’re doing fine, I've definitely experienced worse.” Felix said with a smile.
Sam believed him on that one. He’d never worked in a bar before, but he’d been in enough of them to see the kind of shit that often went down and he’d always pitied the poor employees who would have to deal with rude and violent customers.
“To get back to your previous question,” Sam sighed, taking a smaller sip from his drink, intending to make this one last more than half a minute.
“The show was shit.”
Felix frowned at that. “Hate to hear that you feel like that, it looked pretty good from here.”
Sam looked up at him, slightly confused. The bar area was nowhere near the stage, how would Felix have been able to see it?
Seeing the confusion on his face Felix pointed at a flatscreen tv installed above the shelves above the bar. It currently still showed the arena, the audience lights had been turned on and people were slowly filling out of the hall. The stage was empty, but Sam couldn’t help but let his eyes linger on Danny’s drum kit for a second. Fire and Danny’s face, contorted in a silent scream flashed through his mind. He groaned lightly.
“I gotta say though, those pyrotechnics were intense.” Felix laughed. “For a second there I thought the show might have been an excuse to ritualistically burn your drummer alive.”
Sam plunged his face back into his hands as Felix laughed heartily at his own joke. But the laughter quickly stopped when Sammy’s shoulders started shaking. Heaving sobs wracked his body, tears streaming down his face like a waterfall.
“Shit man, are you alright?” he quickly asked, voice soft and slightly concerned. Sam felt a tentative hand on his shoulder.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say… shit, who’s being the asshole now huh?” Felix let out a nervous laugh.
Sam hated crying in public, especially in front of strangers. Especially if those strangers then might decide to cut off his booze cause they thought he was becoming an emotional drunk.
But Felix made no mention of cutting him off so Sam slightly lifted his head to wipe at his wet cheek. His hand came back red and sparkly. He was still wearing his stage make up and the sudden onslaught of tears was making the red eyeshadow run down his face. God he must look pathetic right now.
“Do you want some water?” Felix asked softly. Sam just nodded, too focussed on steadying his breathing to speak.
The warm and steady hand disappeared from his shoulder, returning a few seconds later as another hand handed him a cold glass of water.
Sam chugged it like he hadn’t had water in days. He hated the feeling in his mouth he always got when he cried. Like someone had stuffed his face with cotton balls soaked in syrup.
The water helped a little.
His breathing got a little steadier. No longer the heaving, ragged breaths that hurt his ribs. The tears were still flowing down his face like someone had opened a faucet however.
He wiped at his face again, smearing more red across his cheeks. Felix quietly handed him a napkin which he accepted gratefully.
He dragged the cloth across his face and blew his stuffy nose but the tears were unrelenting, tracing lines down his skin like they were trying to carve canyons.
Felix looked at him, concern and pity evident on his face.
“You know, the whole ‘bartenders are secretly therapists’ thing is honestly just a sales scheme promoted by Big Alcohol.” he laughed “But i’m willing to give it a try if you wanna talk?”
Sam looked up at his face.
Felix really did have a kind face. He looked like he was about thirty five, the start of smile lines framed the corners of his warm green eyes, his light brown hair was tied up in a small bun at the back of his head. His cheeks were rosy and his chin was clean shaven. He was definitely older than Sam, by a good ten years at least, but in a way he also looked boyish, like he could still be a student.
Sam didn’t know why, but something about him just made the words spill from his lips, just like the tears spilled from his eyes.
“I just love him so much man.” he said, voice sounding wet and shaky.
“I love him so much and I’ve never said anything cause I’m a fucking coward and I care more about my stupid career than about my own happiness, and I wanna tell him so bad but every time I try I feel like theres an anchor on my chest and I can’t say anything cause I don’t wanna ruin what we do have, and what if he doesn’t feel that way about me? What then? Then it’s gonna be weird and uncomfortable and I’ll have ruined all of our dreams with my stupid emotions cause he won’t wanna be in a band with me if he feels like i’m just perving on him from the corner all the time, but I can’t not tell him cause it feels like there’s a rat eating my insides every time I look at him and I just wanna kiss him and hold him and tell him he’s mine and i’m his and he looked so hurt tonight and I don’t know what to do, I can’t see him in pain, he’s the strongest out of all of us he’s always fine, he’s always supposed to be fine!”
Sam knew he was rambling but he couldn’t stop himself. His vision was blurry from the amount of tears streaming down his face, his entire body hurt from the laboured breaths that were shaking him to his core. But he couldn’t stop talking. He had kept all of this inside for so long, hadn’t even shared it with his brothers. And now he was sitting here, in a random venue bar, in a random country, on a random continent, far away from home, spilling his guts to a random stranger.
It honestly felt kinda good.
Sam was panting hard at this point and Felix’s eyes were huge.
He blinked twice, swallowed hard, and shook his head lightly, seemingly trying to order his thoughts before he spoke.
“Yeah I’m definitely not qualified to deal with that.” he said as he huffed out a laugh.
“I think I might be though.” an unsteady voice came from behind Sam.
Felix looked up immediately but it took Sam a moment longer to realise the bar was no longer empty.
He slowly turned around on his barstool and looked at who had entered.
Danny.
He was still wearing his pants from the show, embroidered rhinestones sparkling softly in the dim bar lights. But his mesh top and cape had been replaced with thick bandages wrapping around his entire torso. His make up had also been running, dragging shiny black streaks across his face and down his neck.
He still looked beautiful.
Sam’s breath hitched in his throat. How long had he been standing there, one arm outstretched to hold the door open. How much had he heard?
“Daniel, I…” Sam started, but the words died on his lips.
Dany crossed the room and stopped about a foot in front of Sam.
The two men didn’t differ so much in height, especially not when you compared them to the twins. But Danny had always had a few inches on Sam. The height of the barstool had eliminated this difference, so now even though Sam was sitting down and Danny was standing they were perfectly eye to eye.
“Did you mean what you said?” Danny asked.
Sam didn’t know how to reply. He opened his mouth but his voice was stuck somewhere in his throat. Danny’s expression was unreadable.
He could deny everything. Turn it all into a joke, pretend he was drunk. But the tear tracks on his cheeks and his desperate eyes gave him away.
So he simply closed his eyes, swallowed once, and nodded.
Before he could open his eyes again to face whatever emotion had decided to settle on Danny’s features a set of lips crashed into his own.
The kiss was not exactly what Sam had always dreamt it would be. He had hoped for laughter, sunshine, fluttering hearts and soft promises.
But this kiss was tearstreaked, dark, grimy, and full of uncertainty.
Sam’s heart still fluttered though.
Danny’s hands found his face and his fingers made their way into his hair, gripping the strands at the back of his head, frantically trying to push their faces closer together.
Sam’s hands found Danny’s waist, pulling his hips between his own open legs in an attempt to press their chests together, aching for any inch of physical connection he could get before he would innevitably open his eyes and find out it had all been a dream wrapped up in a nightmare.
Danny disconnected their lips with a pained gasp when Sam’s hands blindly made their way up his back.
“Shit, fuck, Daniel, I’m so sorry.” Sam started to say when he realised what he had done. Danny’s back was obviously still painful despite whatever care the medics had provided.
Danny simply shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment, trying to breath through the sudden resurgence of the shooting pain he had felt earlier that night.
His hands let go of Sam’s hair and travelled back to his cheeks, resting there while he slowly inhaled through his nose and exhaled through his mouth.
Sam was frozen in panic.
It had been bad enough that Danny had been hurt in the first place, but the fact that he had now added to the pain made his heart sink into his stomach like a rock into a lake.
When Danny finally opened his eyes again he shot Sam a weak smile.
“You worry too much.” he said, his thumb wiping a fresh tear off of Sam’s cheek.
Sam let out a shaky laugh, uncertain of what was happening at the moment. Danny had kissed him. On his own volition. But he hadn’t really said anything, hadn’t replied to Sam’s rambling monlogue. Had he just kissed him to shut him up? But why would he do that?
Sam’s mind was going a thousand miles an hour again and Danny could tell. Danny could always tell.
He wiped his thumb over Sam’s lips.
“And you think too loud.” he said before kissing him again.
This kiss was closer to what Sam had imagined. Still no sunshine or laughter, but his fluttering heart returned and he felt like the first steps towards soft promises had been made.
Felix had kept quiet behind them. Not fully understanding what had happened but getting the general impression that it was a good thing.
He couldn’t really leave the bar. He was the only one on shift tonight and even though he didn’t exactly expect these two to ransack it after they had stopped crying and making out, if his boss found out he’d just left while there were still patrons inside he would definitely get fired.
So his best option to give the two sobbing, kissing men some privacy was just to retreat to the furthest corner of the bar and focus very hard on polishing some already spotless glasses.
His good intentions were shattered a few moments later however as two more men entered the room.
Felix held his heart for a moment, not sure what the reaction would be but preparing to kick them out without hesitation if they so much as gave a dirty look.
What happened instead surprised him more than anything else that night.
“HA!” one of the two men exclaimed loudly. He had curly hair which was shaved at the sides and even though he was wearing a simple white sweater and tan jeans, traces of glitter still shimmered on his face.
The other man simply stood in the door opening for a moment. Quite obviously having been cut off in the middle of a sentence, a look of confusion on his face. Until he looked at the two man at the bar.
Once he spotted them he threw his head back and let out a groan. His long brown hair spilled down his shoulders in a dramatic fashion.
“I believe you owe me some money Jakey.” the first man laughed, a big toothy grin plastered across his face.
The long haired man groaned again, head now slumping forward as he started digging through his pockets.
“They couldn’t have waited one more week?” he muttered as he fished out a twenty dollar bill and threw it at the first man. “I was so sure they could make it to thanksgiving at least… Fuck you Josh, how the fuck did you know.”
The first man, Josh? bent down to pick up the money the other man, Jakey? Jake? Had thrown at him. When he stood up again he clasped Jake on the shoulder and flashed another dazzling smile at him.
“Because brother dear, I am five minutes older and therefore infinitely wiser than you can ever fathom to be.”
Jake frowned at him and shrugged the hand off of his shoulder.
“And also,” Josh continued “because my bunk is in the middle of the row between the two of them and they both talk in their sleep. If I had to listen to either of them moaning out the other’s name at 4am again I would have locked them in a room together and forced them to fess up myself.”
“That’s cheating!” Jake exclaimed.
“You had insider information!”
“Inside- what is this? The fucking stock market?”
The two men kept arguing as they left the bar, apparently having forgotten why they had entered in the first place.
The two at the bar hadn’t even seemed to notice them. Too lost in their own world and each other’s embrace.
Felix decided that his boss could honestly get fucked.
He needed a smoke break.
The end.
